Letter to the Editor: ‘Democracy is Sustained, First and Foremost, Locally’

To the Editor:

For most of my professional life, I have worked to advance democracy and human rights around the world. That work has taught me that effective governance depends on brave people who believe that government should serve its citizens, that rights belong to everyone and that public service is fundamentally an obligation to others.

Those principles also shape how I think about our own community and the people who seek to represent it. That’s why I am voting for Jane Wisialowski for state representative.

As a human rights lawyer, I have spent much of my career thinking about people who can too easily become invisible to government. Jane has spent years working directly with them. As a professional conservator and fiduciary, she has helped older adults and others facing difficult questions involving health care, finances, disability, mental health and aging. That experience matters. There is a difference between talking about the people affected by government policy and sitting across the table from them.

Jane has also done the less glamorous work of local government. In Old Saybrook, she has served on Parks and Recreation, the Board of Education and the Board of Selectmen. She has worked on issues ranging from protecting beaches and open spaces to housing and the everyday concerns of municipal government.

We are living through a moment when I find myself thinking, more than I ever expected to in the United States, about how democracy should work. My work has taken me to countries where democratic institutions are fragile, where the rule of law cannot be taken for granted and where citizens learn what happens when public institutions cease to work for them. I know from personal experience that democracy is sustained, first and foremost, locally. It depends on people willing to do the often uncelebrated work of listening, learning, solving problems and remembering whom government is supposed to serve.

Those are the qualities I look for in public leadership. They are also the lens through which I look at Jane Wisialowski’s record of service, and the principles she has articulated in seeking to represent the 23rd District. I am voting for Jane because she represents what good government should look like. I encourage you to do the same.

Dave Rubino
Old Lyme

Editor’s Note: Rubino is a member of the Old Lyme Democratic Town Committee.